THE HAUNTED LAND: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After...

THE HAUNTED LAND: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism by Tina Rosenberg (Vintage: $13; 437 pp.). “Contrary to communist wisdom, history does not march,” comments Rosenberg in this Pulitzer Prize-winning study. “It lurches. Worse, it lurches in circles, hiccuping and banging into walls, unable to control or even be aware of its compass.” Rosenberg focuses on the reeling history of Eastern Europe where, having endured decades of repression, incompetence and corruption, citizens must now judge former government officials and their own complicity. The most extreme problems exist in Germany, where more than 62,000 tons of Stasi files are being scrutinized to identify agents, informers and victims. Rosenberg supports her trenchant analysis by interviewing a range of people, from dissidents and border guards to General Wojciech Jaruzelski. How these people deal with the failures and crimes of the past may well determine the future of their fragile democracies.